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This paper seeks to describe the design, implementation, and lessons learned from an obesity prevention pilot program delivered in a low resource school in the USA.

A planned program evaluation was conducted to: document explicitly the process of designing and implementing the program; and assess the feasibility and acceptability of the program to inform future planning. Evaluation data were gathered using document review (i.e. minutes from meetings with research staff and school personnel), key informant interviews, and focus groups. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Quantitative data were summarized using descriptive statistics.

A total of 113 African‐American students (47 per cent female) participated in the program. Over half were overweight or obese and mean nutrition and physical activity behaviors were below recommended guidelines. A participatory process involving school administrators, teachers, parents, and students resulted in the design of a program salient to the target population and responsive to the school's limited financial and human resources. The program was positively viewed by student and school staff alike. Challenges for implementing the program included: maintaining classroom management with very large class sizes and limited school staff, and difficulty in actively engaging parents in program implementation.

As a pilot program at a single school during one school year, the results may have limited generalizability. However, the paper supports the feasibility and acceptability of obesity prevention interventions in schools with limited resources.

School‐based programs can support nutrition education and increased physical activity opportunities, which may promote lifelong health behaviors. Future programs can increase the likelihood of behavior change and program sustainability by limiting class sizes, increasing parent involvement, integrating intrapersonal level changes with institutional factors, and developing community partnerships.

The research described provides insights into effective strategies and lessons learned for developing school‐based obesity‐prevention programs in schools with limited resources.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of adopting knowledge management systems (KMSs) on firms’ performance. Although many organizations have adopted the notion of KMS, there is little evidence on the effect of KMS on a firm’s performance, especially in an emerging economy like the Egyptian one. An intensive literature review is conducted not only to synthesize but also to establish the conceptual foundations for the systemic perspective of knowledge management and its potential impact on knowledge management performance in an emerging information and communication technology (ICT) industry. This systemic perspective fits with the evolutionary nature of such an emerging industry in Egypt.

The empirical study of this work is conducted on knowledge-intensive firms operating in the field of ICT. The paper is descriptive in nature where a quantitative research design is adopted to survey senior managers’ perceptions – from both national and multinational enterprises operating in Egypt – on the pay-off maintained from creating an integrative KMS. The primary data are collected from 90 managers holding significant top positions related to the knowledge management area. A linear simple regression test is conducted to discover the initial association between the conceptual model’s key variables.

The results of this work reveal that there is a positive association between each of the six elements that constitute a KMS, namely, knowledge: creation, acquisition, codification, sharing, transfer and measurement, and the perceived knowledge management performance. Besides, there is a significant positive association between the adopted total KMS and perceived knowledge management performance. This study provides strong evidence that KMSs are essential to improve firms’ performance. The results of t-test and analysis of variance assert that the gender, types of business, year of experience and age of respondents have no significant difference to perceived knowledge management performance resulting from KMS.

The findings reflect the fact that informants have to deploy six components that constitute a KMS to realize improvements in knowledge management performance. This work also highlights a number of findings of great value to managers in the ICT sector. Yet, the empirical study does not cover all the issues which are linked to KMS implementation. Issues such as culture, trust and leadership role in building a significant KMS are not examined in this work. Also, the generalizability of the findings to other industries must be considered carefully. Although the findings are statistically significant, the framework developed may be quite specific to the ICT organizations.

This paper enhances managers’ understanding in deploying the notion of KMSs to leverage their corporate performance. It also provides managers in emerging markets with an integrative perspective to fundamental issues that encounter them when they put those KMSs into practice.

This research advances understanding of the application and benefit of KMS in ICT firms in several ways: it provides a better understanding of KMS and practices currently being applied in the Egyptian ICT firms. There had been little or no industry-wide empirical research on this topic to date, it provides a better understanding of knowledge processes in the ICT sector; specifically, the links between knowledge acquisition, creation, codification, sharing, transfer and measurement, and their links to performance, the measurement instruments developed for this research constitute a reliable set of construct measures that provide a basis for future research.

This paper advances the knowledge management subject by synthesizing past studies into an integrative KMS that directs scholars’ attention on how to examine the notion. It is claimed that KMS help those managers improve core business processes, management decisions and, accordingly, firms’ performance. Besides, this study suggests a set of implications for managers in an emerging market that has recently adopted the notion of KMSs. This study also reflects the viewpoints and perceptions of key managers in a strongly evolving knowledge-intensive industry that has an increasing impact on the GDP of an entire nation throughout the past two decades.

A learning-focused culture promotes creativity, innovativeness and the acquisition of novel insights and competencies. The study aims to explore the relationship between human resource development (HRD) practice and employee competencies using organizational learning culture as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 828 employees of 37 health care institutions comprising 24 (internationally-owned) and 13 (indigenously-owned). Construct reliability and validity was established through a confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Data supported the hypothesized relationships. The results show that training and development and employee competencies were significantly related. Career development and employee competencies were significantly related. Organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between training and development and employee competencies. However, organizational learning culture did not mediate the relationship between career development and employee competencies.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s health care focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers to policy makers and stakeholders of health care institutions in developing system-level capacities that promote continuous learning and adaptive learning cultures to ensure sustainability and competitive advantage.

By evidencing empirically that organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between HRD practices and employee competencies the study extends the literature.

In the digital era individuals are overwhelmed by huge amount of readily available information. The information provided at the time of COVID-19 crisis is increasingly available. The purpose of this paper was to investigate individuals’ perceived feelings due to the plethora of information during COVID-19 pandemic in Greece in Spring 2020.

This study was conducted through a Web-based questionnaire survey posted on the Google Forms platform. The questionnaire consisted of closed-ended, seven-point Likert-scale questions. The data collected were subjected to a principal component analysis. The retained principal components (PCs) were subjected to statistical analysis between genders and among age groups and professional status with the nonparametric criteria Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis.

Responses by 776 individuals were obtained. Seventeen original variables from the questionnaire were summarized into three PCs that explained the 71.7% of total variance: “affective disorders,” “uncertainty issues and inaccurate information worries” and “satisfaction and optimism.” Participants partly agree that the received amount of information on the disease caused them feelings of uncertainty about the future and worries about relatives’ lives, but also satisfaction with developments in the country. Females seem to experience stronger perceived feelings of “affective disorders” (p < 0.001) and reported higher degree of agreement about “uncertainty issues and inaccurate information worries.”

The recorded feelings caused by the volume of available information may have forced people accept the necessary precautionary behavioral changes that had contributed to the Greek success in preventing spread of the disease in Spring 2020.